This was a fresh install of everything right down to the distro. Fresh downloads of everything else today as well. All new entirely. Looking at the extracted tree from my litespeed tarball I grabbed today, allow_call_time_pass_reference is set to On.

php.ini that comes with php 5.4 tarball should have allow_call_time_pass_reference set to Off by default. for other php.ini, you need to check before use. not all app install script check that directive.